The LT3080 is a 1.1A 3-terminal LDO that may be easily paralleled for heat spreading and its output is adjustable with a single resistor. This allows all surface mount solutions with the LT3080 where switchers were used before or where noise required linear regulators mounted on a heat sink. Until now, power was limited by the ability of a surface mount board to dissipate power – about 2W. Now the power can be spread over several regulators allowing higher output current.

This new architecture regulator uses a current reference and follower to allow sharing between multiple regulators with a small length of PCB trace as ballast, enabling multi-amp linear regulation in an all surface-mount system without heat sinks.

The LT3080 achieves high performance without any compromises. Featuring wide input voltage capability from 1.2V TO 36V (40V max), it has a low dropout voltage as low as 300mV (two supply operation) at full load. The output voltage is adjustable, spanning a wide range from 0V to 34.7V (single-supply operation), and the on-chip trimmed reference achieves high accuracy of ±1%. Output noise is only 40uVRMS over a wide 10Hz to 100kHz bandwidth. The IC’s direct paralleling and wide VIN & VOUT capability, tight line and load regulation, high ripple rejection and low external parts count make it ideal for modern multiple-rail systems.

Having the collector of the pass transistor available further enhances the options of spreading the heat. External resistors may be used to further spread the heat at very low cost. Also, with the ability to provide zero output, it can control powering down parts of the system.

The LT3080 is offered in a variety of thermally-enhanced surface-mount compatible packages including the low profile (0.75mm) 8-lead DFN (3mm x 3mm), an 8-lead thermally-enhanced MSOP, and simple-to-use 3-lead SOT-223 package. These packages are able to dissipate 1W to 2W in surface mount applications without a heat sink. In addition, the device is housed in a TO-220 power package for mounting to heat sinks for higher power dissipation operation.